Today's update (what would a downdate be?)

Good work today, Jakub Grimstad.

Today I wrote about 2300 words.  That's not all that impressive, I'm sure, compared to Steven King, who writes that many words in seven or eight dimensions at the same rate.  But hey, I'm not cracked out.  I really couldn't decide what to write earlier in the day, but this evening I cranked out 2300.  And looking at the time, its been about an hour since I started.  That's not so bad, really, if only I could do that many words every hour.  I'd have a novel in a fortnight! 

Its actually been about 1.5 fortnights since I've started this new story, and it does seem like its going slow.  Well, not exactly.  The story is actually moving along, but the page count is slow.  But I did break 20,000 words tonight.  I expect the story to only be about 10k longer, but who knows.  Sometimes something I think won't take long ends up taking longer while all the stuff from earlier ends up being much shorter.  Once again, I really don't know how people pump out those 200,000 word super epics.  I pick those books up, and I can't figure it out.  Is it just more stuff happening?  Is there more description?

I actually think part of it is my writing style.  In a fantasy book, they're always explaining everybody's back story.  In my stories, I don't do that.  You mostly meet the characters where they are and go from there.  I may give a little detail as to their pasts, but mostly I feel its my job to show their character through their immediate actions and feelings.  Maybe because I was raised watching movies.  I mean, I read a good bit, especially when I was younger, but when I write I mostly try to write very sensually, and by that I just mean I try to engage the readers sensory imagination.  Not just in my more modern stories, but also in my fantasies I really like to give a sense of place.  In this story and Invalid, creating that sensory observance is very important to creating a nostalgia for childhood.  Its not always a happy nostalgia, but at least for me, I recall being much more observant to sights and sounds as a child.  The world seemed more real.  I try to make that come out in my stories.